Pavel Lebedev

Web Analytics of Most Popular Browsers

Pavel Lebedev | 2009-07-06

As I said in the previous post, I have Firefox, Opera, IE, and Chrome installed on my desktop and use each of them from time to time. This post will be about some relative merits and drawbacks – as I see them – of those four most popular browsers. So lets start from the less used browser (as shares pie suggest), Chrome.

Chrome

Chrome is the browser developed by Google based on open source WebKit browser technology. Its most appealing property is simplicity and carefully designed GUI and "chrome layout", and it is a very strong appeal, in fact. In particular, I myself love that Chrome uses the window's title bar at the top for tabbing. The window's title bar is usually underutilized in most cases, and such solution saves quite a lot of precious vertical visual space (especially when working on laptops with relatively small screen).

I tried to find similar chrome layout for Firefox as extension, but failed. A couple of Firefox extensions attempt to produce similar GUI, but they luck its main feature – use of window's title bar.

Apart from more efficient use of visual space, it is perfectly intuitive and logical to have tabs bar at the window's top title bar, not where most browsers currently have it (just above the document's space). This is because in such layout specific tab visually "incapsulates" everything that relates to its content: location bar, menu commands that apply to document opened in that tab, etc. Such chrome layout is more intuitively understood at subconscious level, so it is more optimal.

Another Chrome's attraction is ultrafast new V8 JavaScript engine. It is really ultrafast. In several benchmark tests, V8 is faster than JScript of Internet Explorer (many times), SpiderMonkey of Firefox before version 3.1 (but TraceMonkey of Firefox 3.1 and above is equally fast as V8), and JavaScriptCore of Safari. And it is really very important, because Web 2.0 evolution, the advent of JavaScript Ajax libraries/frameworks (like Dojo, jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, etc.) turn pages of many sites into heavily "javascripted" GUIs, but we, humans, are very sensitive to even slightest delays in GUI execution and such scripted GUIs may be subconsciously perceived as unresponsive and "heavy" (even if objectively delays are insignificant), making browsing really annoying. But with Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine no delays are perceived on scripted pages, making Chrome to be perceived as very light and easy browser. This is another very strong appeal.

The only other JavaScript engine that currently has approximately equal performance is TraceMonkey of Firefox. They both use similar technology of JIT compilation of JavaScript code down to native machine code, the performance boosting technique used to speedup interpreters and virtual machines of various interpreted languages.

The major drawback of Chrome is the apparently underdeveloped advanced options palette that other browser products enjoy. The browser appears a little bit too simplistic (although exactly this may be seen as benefit by many users).

IE

I used IE6 and IE7 browsers primarily for their very economic consumption of computer's RAM memory, those browsers on Windows where much more efficient in memory usage than all other browsers. Plus, they were very fast and efficient in rendering pages. They loaded pages with that sense of easiness and lightweightness that I just described for Chrome V8 JavaScript engine. And in that sense IE6 was even better than IE7 (apart from JavaScript, which is really slow in IE).

IE8 has changed things. First, while page rendering is now comparably fast, it is subjectively still a bit slower that that of IE7 and, especially, IE6. On the memory management front IE8 implements entirely different architecture of "process isolation" instead of using lightweight threads in the single process. This means that memory efficiency advantage has completely evaporated, if compared to IE6 and IE7.

On the JavaScript front all versions of IE are so veeeery slooooow, especially compared to Chrome and Firefox. Really VERY SLOW. I can no longer use this browser on heavily scripted pages, it quickly annoys me because of that Javascript slowness. And since there are more and more such scripted pages around, with the release of Firefox 3.5 I decided to drop actively using IE8 (but I still use it sometimes though).

Opera

We consider visitors of our site as our friends. More and more of our friends switch to Opera.

Opera is a nice browser. Opera lacks monopoly power of IE, wide developers community of Firefox, and strong financial backing of Chrome, but thanks to dedicated development still Opera is an innovative browser that is currently number two on our site.

I have a feeling, that Opera is exceptionally popular in the community of exceptionally discernive people, technologically literate and sophisticated users. This highly valued popularity is based on real benefits. Many innovative features that are currently used by all browsers where in fact pioneered by Opera developers. That is why I myself love this browser.

Firefox

Most popular browser among our friends (visitors of our site) is Firefox. Friends, I should say that you guys have a good taste.

Main advantage of Firefox is its unparalleled flexibility via myriads of extensions and plugins available. I myself use about a dozen of extensions, despite I am very conservative user who prefers minimalism, bare convenience, kind of no-jazzy-colorful-toys-please. It is almost always possible to find extension for anything that user may want, provided that enough of other users want that thing too.

This allows unlimited customization of the browser, which is very important, since browser is an everyday commodity, like your slippers and mobile phone. Browser should be allowed to be customized, flexed, bended and decorated in an unlimited number of ways.

For example, I cannot take the default way that Firefox opens new tabs as last tab at the end of all opened tabs array. I usually open many tabs and in this case such default behavior quickly makes tabbed browsing a total mess. Instead, tab should be opened near the current tab from where it is opened, so that tabs remain grouped and easy to manage and navigate. Obviously, I am not alone in this. In just about few minutes I easily found simple extension that does exactly what I need – opens new tabs next to the current one. This immediately made me much happier. I love Firefox.

The relative drawback of Firefox so far was that it was eating a lot of memory and be slow to render pages. However, the release of Firefox 3.5 solved performance problems, so that Firefox 3.5 renders pages very fast, probably faster than any other browser at the moment. Plus, memory consumption has improved and become more efficient. Plus, the leader in minimizing memory footprint – IE – has changed its architecture in IE8 and stopped being a leader, so Firefox 3.5 is now clearly the winner over many criteria.

Another strong point of Firefox is blazing fast performance of its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine used in Firefox 3.5 release. This makes big difference for heavily scripted pages, and there are many such pages around (including web analytics reports of TrackSite) – we all live in Web 2.0 Era. The speed of Firefox's TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is (approximately) equal to that of another JavaScript performance leader, V8 engine of Chrome – subjectively their performances are perceived as very close (indistinguishable) in terms of speed. And it is blazing fast really.

Taken together, these factors explain well why Firefox is the most popular browser amongst you, our friends.

The Bottom Line

Web analysts should be aware of the above differences in usage patterns of most popular browsers to be able to understand behaviours exhibited by specific groups of visitors.

In particular, web analysts tracking heavily "javascripted" sites should be interested the most, since it may explain many negative patterns that they may observe on such sites.

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